Crane Company (NYSE:CR) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 23, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jason Feldman - Vice President, Treasury & Investor Relations
Max Mitchell - President & Chief Executive Officer
Richard Maue - Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Matt Summerville - D.A. Davidson
Scott Deuschle - Deutsche Bank
Nathan Jones - Stifel
Damian Karas - UBS
Justin Ages - CJS Securities

Operator

Welcome to the Crane Company First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions].

I'd now like to turn the call over to Jason Feldman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Treasury and Tax. Please go ahead.

Jason Feldman

Thank you, operator, and good day, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings release conference call.

On our call this morning, we have Max Mitchell, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer and Rich Maue, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We'll start off our call with a few prepared remarks, after which we will respond to questions.

Just a reminder, that the comments we make on this call may include some forward-looking statements. We refer you to the cautionary language at the bottom of our earnings release and also in our annual report, 10-K and subsequent filings pertaining to forward-looking statements. Also during the call, we'll be using some non-GAAP numbers, which are reconciled to the comparable GAAP numbers and tables at the end of our press release and accompanying slide presentation, both of which are available on our website at www.craneco.com, in the Investor Relations section.

Now let me turn the call over to Max.

Max Mitchell

Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call today. Yet another impressive quarter with results outperforming expectations. Adjusted EPS was $1.22, driven by 5% core sales growth, along with strong leading indicators, core orders and backlog both up 11% compared to last year.

We are off to a great start in 2024. Based on that strength, we are raising our full-year guidance by $0.20 to a range of $4.75 to $5.05, which reflects 14% EPS growth at the midpoint. That's a high-confidence guidance that we have direct line of sight to delivering, assuming somewhat muted industrial activity and continued. but gradual improvement in the aerospace and electronics supply chain.

While this is our best thinking today, we believe there may be upside as the year progresses if those two assumptions prove conservative. If so, we are structured to meet any unexpected changes in upside demand. There's also a potential upside to guidance from capital deployment if we are successful with further M&A in the quarters ahead.